I’ve been reading Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad’s vastly ambitious and very largely successful The Cold War A World History.1 One of the great advantages of reading a European’s take is that he has a much more nuanced understanding of what was happening in Europe during the Cold War than an American historian would. He’s…
Watch Jonah Goldberg morph into Donald Trump
Yes, it’s taken awhile. National Review conservatives like Jonah Goldberg were repelled by Donald Trump’s vicious nativism, his embrace of those good people who shout “Jews, you will not replace us”, plus all his wild talk about how we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan and that he always thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad…
Yo, Megan McArdle! It should be “Be Careful WHOM You Call a ‘White Supremacist’”!
Well, it should be, and you should be too. You should be very careful, very very careful, as Megan explains, at great length, and with great vagueness, over at Bloomberg Review. Sure, you should be. It was highly stupid, not to mention highly condescending—and even borderline racist—for Vice President Biden to warn blacks that Republicans…
Tempest in a Teaspoon—The Exterminating Angel. You’ve seen the movie, now hear the opera!
Fewer sheep, more tunes! That’s the short take on composer Thomas Adès fascinating new opera, The Exterminating Angel, enjoying its Metropolitan Opera premiere on October 26. The Exterminating Angel, with a libretto by Tom Cairns, is based on Luis Buñuel’s 1962 classic exercise in Iberian surrealism, directed by Buñuel using a screenplay he wrote in…
Apple doesn’t do Jazz
It’s a well known, and thoroughly lamentable, fact that kids rule the world. Nowhere is this dominance more visible, and more vicious, than in the world of music. Almost 12 years ago, I started loading my collection of some 800 CDs—about 9/10th jazz and 1/10th classical—onto my Windows computer, creating a folder for each artist/composer…
What’s worse than suffering through the faux double entendres in those insufferable Duluth Trading Co. ads? Suffering through the insufferable whining of New York Times “conservatives”
Yes, NYT-approved conservatives Ross Douthat, who has, on occasion, received a hearty thumb’s up from me, and Trump-hatin’ Bret Stephens, whom I’ve basically ignored, have both been actin’ conservative and actin’ out in recent days. First up, and the more dispensable, is Ross, who’s actin’ all Catholic and accusatory, heading off a recent column on…
Wheaton College Jazz Ensemble—“Bemsha Swing”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJQo0R3htYs Can Christians do Monk? Oh, yeah! The Wheaton College Jazz Ensemble, featuring Katie Ernst, director; Tim Henry, trombone; Joel Campau, trumpet; Austin Alianiello, soprano saxophone; and Ryan Burroughs, drums. The arrangement is by Bill Holman. No information on the rest of the performers. Posted by Wheaton College
“Bloomberg View” on the Iran nuclear agreement—It’s Unanimous!
‘Has Trump Fixed the ‘Worst Deal Ever’? Kinda, Sorta’—Tobin Hanshaw ‘Trump’s Iran Plan Does Too Much and Too Little’—Megan L. O’Sullivan ‘Trump’s Tough Talk on Iran Fails to Mask His Inaction’—Eli Lake Short version: “INVADE, ALREADY! INVADE!”
Ed Rogers, Hustler Without a Hustle, Politique Without a Party
If you had asked me, six months ago, to come up with a name for right-wing K Street cowboy/honcho Ed Rogers, I might have chosen “Smarmy McSmarmface”, or something, well, equally smarmy. But today I think I’d have to go with “Sad Little Man”, which isn’t really a name but does capture the fact that…
Jeff Bezos, with a penis on his pocket, and lookin’ mighty like an asshole
I’ve previously descanted on the tendency of billionaires to develop a fondness for large, penis-shaped objects. Well, we can, obviously, add Jeff Bezos to that list. Jeff, with his shaved head n’ shades lookin’ seriously Walter White, is shown posin’ with a rocket (reusable, of course) that’s part of his space transportation company “Blue Origin”….